Hi Chocoholics. Cadbury Lite never gives me intestinal distress, but the aspartame in it always seems to lead to over- indulgence. Isomalt is one of the more intestinally benign S.A's but I'm sure it still gives some people strife. Besides, Cadbury Lite is milk chocolate. A bit of a waste of cocoa, don't you think?
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Anyway, you can get excellent unsweetened bakers chocolate in 5kg blocks for $75 from Jimele Distribution in Slacks Creek in Brisbane -38082037. From memory their delivery charge to anywhere in Brisbane is very low. If you're lucky they will have a broken block sitting around and you'll be able to get less than 5 kg's. In any case baker's chocolate, contrary to all popular advice, can safely be refrigerated for up to 5 years. The cocoa butter will migrate after about 6 months causing the surface 'bloom' we have all seen on refrigerated chocolate. But you'll eventually be making your own chocolate or using it in cooking which effectively reincorporates the cocoa butter anyway. If you keep it at room temp as all the chocolate wankers suggest, it won't last longer than a couple of months, or even at the 18 deg C experts (like Jimele) recommend, it only has a shelf life of about 18 months. After that the flavour of both the cocoa butter and the cocoa solids start to deteriorate. 18 month's is probably heaps for most people, but then 5 kg is a lot of chocolate. Bakers chocolate is about 50% cocoa butter. If you want to up the fat content you can also buy 1kg buckets of it from Jimele for $20. Jimele are the Brisbane agents for a Sydney based outfit - Apromo trading, who will direct non- Brisbanites to their other Capital city agents. There is another Brisbane based supplier of chocolate making stuff, including bakers chocolate - Kempe Australia. But the prices are a fair bit higher, and the guy who runs it is a bit of a twit. If you do go for the 5kg block and refrigerate it, it's a good idea to break it into much smaller amounts beforehand, and then make sure every piece is absolutely hermetically sealed. Moisture and air are both deadly to chocolate. Freezing increases bakers chocolate shelf life to about 7 years. But surely you can get through five kgs before that! Remember, you can't long term refrigerate the finished eating chocolate, only the bakers chocoate. If you are making your own chocolate, it is really important to gradually warm the bakers chocolate to prepare it for adding the sweetening. Microwaving, however gently, is useless. Hotspots will form and you will ruin the whole batch. The best way is to put a 25 watt light bulb in some kind of insulated enclosure (cardboard is ideal) under the bowl containing the bakers chocolate. This way of melting obviates the need to even stir it- even though stirring will speed up the process.
BTW. modern cocoa powder is fine enough to use for making chocolate without the gritty taste 'unconched' chocolate was notorious for. But you MUST use cocoa butter as the shortening. No other fat has a high enough melting point and your chocolate will be a puddle at room temp.
Tempering is an often neglected stage in successful home chocolate making. If you want chocolate that is hard at room temp, even using proper cocoa butter, you must temper the cooling chocolate. Commercial chocolate makers do this with sophisticated cooling , reheating, cooling again, reheating again and then finally cooling again to very critcal temperature profiles - pretty well impossible in a domestic kitchen. So if you want chocolate that sets in a mould, you will never be able to properly temper your own chocolate. But as long as you don't mind irregular roughly broken bits, you can easily and properly temper the cooling chocolate by pouring the still warm sweetened liquid chocolate onto a sheet of aluminium foil and then stirring the puddle gently with anything ( I use a bamboo skewer) for about five minutes until the chocolate crystals ( at a microscopic level) start to form and the chocolate really suddenly feels really stiff. Stop stirring it immediately and leave it for about and hour, after which you break the now hard and very glossy looking chocolate into bite size bits....... and start eating it
. You will need to use erythritol (or some other sugar alcohol, but all the others are rubbish, so don't bother
) with whatever intense sweetener you are using - sucralose, acesulphame K , stevia, or saccharin - none of them work on their own.
Most home chocolate making stuff you learn in courses, on the net, or in books neglect the essential stage of tempering, probably because people seem to want neat little squares from chocolate moulds. Unfortunately without a programmable tempering machine you'll have to get over eating the regimented squares. It shouldn't matter though. Once you taste your own properly tempered home made low carb chocolate, you won't mind what shape it comes in